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Defending Corporate Identity on New Spain's Northeastern Frontier: San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala, 1780-1810*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Leslie S. Offutt
Leslie S. Offutt*
Affiliation:
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York
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In 1808, confronted with the latest in a lengthy series of legal challenges to its corporate landholdings, the municipal council of the Indian town of San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala, in the northeastern province of Coahuila in New Spain, dispatched a blistering note to its counterpart in the adjoining Spanish town of Saltillo. The question of the moment concerned the right of Saltillo residents José Miguel and Juan González to route water they claimed in one place to property San Esteban had earlier allowed them to farm in another. But to do so meant that the water would be directed across lands belonging to San Esteban. When the Indian town denied them this right, the brothers protested vigorously. They contended that agriculture was, after all, the mainstay of the local economy. It benefited the public, the king, the church, and particularly the families of the pueblo itself. To deny these two farmers access to their water was to jeopardize agricultural production in the area. Further, they argued, San Esteban possessed much uncultivated arid land; perhaps the pueblo should consider renting some of the Gonzálezes' water as it flowed across the town's properties. Implicit in this suggestion was the assumption that San Esteban residents could not deal with what they had, that they were wasteful in utilizing their resources, and that Spaniards, in this particular case the brothers González, were better equipped to exploit the resources of the community.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , January 2008 , pp. 351 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2008

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Professor Susan M. Deeds of Northern Arizona University for her incisive comments on an earlier draft of this article, and Vassar College's Committee on Research for grants-in-aid in 1998-99 and 2006-7 that facilitated the archival research on which this article is based. I am deeply indebted to the staff at the Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, where I have been so warmly welcomed over the years on various research trips. Special thanks go to Carlos Manuel Valdés Dávila, former Jefe del Acervo Histórico; his successor Lic. María del Rosario Villarreal; Elsa de Valle Esquivel, subdirectora of the Archivo Municipal; and Abraham Martínez Urbina, the jefe del departmento de sistemas. I thank as well the staff at the Archivo del Estado de Coahuila in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila for their assistance in the latter stages of this research.

References

1 Both González brothers were identified as farmers (labradores) in the documentation, and Juan held the post of Saltillo’s síndico procurador, or town attorney. He appeared to act in this case, however, not on Saltillo’s behalf but as an individual property owner. Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, ramo Presidencia Municipal (hereafter AMS, PM), 58, exp. 17, 1808. The bothers claimed the lands they were seeking to irrigate had earlier been ceded to them by the pueblo, and that they had always offered to pay whatever rent San Esteban thought fair for those properties, but the pueblo, through its “complete error and ill faith” (“su total error y desconfianza”), refused to accept payment.

2 “ … se conosera de que el comun de este pueblo el no dar pase segun la pretencion de dhos sres ynteresados, no por que llevados del desarroyo de errores pusilaminidad, desconfianza o temores como los sres ynteresados ynsinuan en su escrito, pues de lo que uno es dueño tiene libertad y esta obligado a defender el dro de sus hijos.” AMS, PM, 58, exp. 17, 1808. I have kept the original punctuation and spelling wherever possible in quotations from archival sources.

3 James Lockhart’s work on corporate identity, in “Views of Corporate Self and History in Some Valley of Mexico Towns: Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Collier, George A., Rosaldo, Renato, and Wirth, John D., eds., The Inca and Aztec States, 1400-1800 (New York: Academic Press, 1982)Google Scholar has shaped my perspective on San Esteban’s efforts to defend its interests. See as Haskett, well Robert, “Visions of Municipal Glory Undimmed: The Nahuatl Town Histories of Colonial Cuernavaca,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 1:1 (Fall 1992), pp. 1–36.Google Scholar

4 Stern, Steve J., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987)Google Scholar; the phrase quoted is on p. 9; Deeds, Susan M., Defiance and Deference in Mexico’s Colonial North: Indians under Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Radding, Cynthia, Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700–1850 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997); the phrase quoted is on p. 3.Google Scholar

5 Radding, , Wandering Peoples, p. 1.Google Scholar

6 Robles, Vito Alessio, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial (México: Editorial Porrúa, 1978 [1938]Google Scholar; Coahuila y Texas desde la consumación de la Independencia hasta el tratado de paz de, Guadalupe Hidalgo (México: Antiguo Librería Robredo, 1946); Acapulco, Saltillo, y Monterrey en la historia y en la leyenda (México: Editorial Porrúa, 1978).

7 Hoyo, Eugenio del, Historia del Nuevo Reino de León (1577-1723) (Monterrey: Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, 1972)Google Scholar; see as well his compilation of documents on northeastern Indians in Esclavitud y encomiendas de indios en el Nuevo Reino de León, siglos XVI y XVII (Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado de Nuevo León, 1985).

8 Osante, Patricia, Orígenes del Nuevo Santander (1748-1772) (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, 1997).Google Scholar

9 Cuello, José, Saltillo colonial: Orígenes y formación de una sociedad mexicana en la frontera norte (Saltillo: Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, 2004)Google Scholar; El norte, el noreste y Saltillo en la historia colonial de México (Saltillo: Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, 1990), several chapters of which are translations of articles appearing elsewhere in English; Offutt, Leslie S., Saltillo 1770–1810: Town and Region in the Mexican North (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Una sociedad urbana y rural en el norte de México: Saltillo a fines de la época colonial (Saltillo: Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, 1993), a Spanish translation of my 1982 UCLA dissertation.

10 Adams, David B., Las colonias Tlaxcaltecas de Coahuila y Nuevo León en la Nueva España: un aspecto de la colonización del norte de México (Saltillo: Archivo Municipal de Saltillo, 1991)Google Scholar; the most relevant of his articles to Saltillo, and Esteban, San is “Borderland Communities in Conflict: Saltillo, San Esteban, and the Struggle for Municipal Autonomy, 1591–1838,” Locus, 6:1 (Fall 1993),Google Scholar which treats many of the aspects of resistance that I focus on in this inquiry but de-emphasises the cooperative aspects of the relationship between the two towns; Corona Páez, Sergio Antonio, La vitivinicultura en el pueblo de Santa María de las Parras: Producción de vinos, vinagres y aguardientes bajo el paradigma andaluz (siglos XVII y XVIII) (Torreón, Coahuila: Ayuntamiento de Torreón, 2004).Google Scholar A less satisfactory treatment of Tlaxcalan colonization is Sego’s, Eugene Aliados y adversarios: Los colonos tlaxcaltecas en la frontera septentrional de Nueva España (San Luis Potosí: El Colegio de San Luis, 1998), a Spanish translation of his Indiana University dissertation.Google Scholar

11 Prieto, Cecilia Sheridan, Anónimos y desterrados: La contienda por el “sitio que llaman de Quauyla, ” siglos XVI-XVII (México: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social [CIESAS], 2000)Google Scholar; “Reflexiones en torno a las identidades nativas en el noreste colonial,” Relaciones 92 (otoño 2002), vol. XXIII, pp. 77–106; ‘“Indios madrineros’: colonizadores tlaxcaltecas en el noreste novohispano.” Estudios de historia novohispana 24 (2001), pp. 15–51; Baracs, Andrea Martínez, “Colonizaciones tlaxcaltecas,” Historia mexicana 43:2 (oct.-dic. 1993), pp. 195–250.Google Scholar

12 Gerhard, Peter, The North Frontier of New Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 219–20, 325Google Scholar; see as well José, Villanueva D., Julián, Cerano P., Stahle, Dave W., Luckman, Brian H., and Therrell, Matthew D., “Historical Droughts in North-Central Mexico.” North American Drought Monitor Workshop, Mexico, City, October 18–19, 2006, at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/nadm-workshop/20061018/1161201000-abstract.pdf. Google Scholar

13 Escobar, Alonso Mota y, Descripción geográfica de los reinos de Nueva Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya y Nuevo León. Segunda edición, introducción por Joaquín Ramírez Cabanñs (México: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1940), pp. 162–63Google Scholar; Morfi, Fray Juan Agustín de, Viaje de indios y diario del Nuevo México: Noticia biobibliográfica y anotaciones por Vito Alessio Robles (México: Bibliófilos Mexicanos, 1935), pp. 248–49.Google Scholar

14 de Humboldt, Alejandro, Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva España. (México: Editorial Porrúa, 1978), p. 259 (originally published in 1811 as Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, and based in his 1803 tour of New Spain).Google Scholar

15 AMS, PM, 42, exp. 28, 1790; AMS, Actas de Cabildo (hereafter cited as AMS, AC), L 5, a 109, f 160v, 7/2/1785. In at least six years in the late colonial era—1784–86, 1789, 1807, and 1809—Saltillo’s cabildo barred the export of grain, and in at least 1807 and 1809 it allocated funds to purchase grains from outside the district to supply local residents. See AMS, PM, 36, exp. 42, 1784; 38/1, exp. 76, 1786; 41, exp. 64, 1789; 50, exp. 19, 1798; AMS, AC, L 6, a 184, f198, 11/5/1807; AMS, AC, L 6, a 186, f 199, 12/11/1807; AMS, AC, L 6, a 226, f 249v, 11/2/1809; AMS, PM, 51/1, exp. 51, 1799.

16 Enrique Florescano, “Las sequías en las economías preindustriales,” in particular cuadro 1, “Sequías de mayor duración,” in Castorna, Guadalupe, Mora, Elena Sánchez, Enrique, Florescano M., Ríos, Guillermo Padillo, and Viqueira, Luis Rodríguez, comps., Análisis histórico de las sequías en México (México: Secretaría de Agricultura y Recursos Hidráulicos, 1980), p. 23.Google Scholar A graphic representation of drought cycles in Saltillo may be found in Villanueva, D. et al., “Historical Droughts in North-Central Mexico,” in particular figure 4, p. 3, and PowerPoint slide p. 19 (“Precipitation Reconstruction, Saltillo, Coahuila”) at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/nadm-workshop/20061018/1161201000-abstract.pdf..Google Scholar Alma García Hernández has examined drought in Saltillo during what she terms a period of “permanent scarcity” in “Alternativas ante las sequías de 1789–1810 en la villa de Saltillo, Coahuila, México,” in Acosta, Virginia García, coordinadora, Historia y desastres en América Latina (Santa Fé de Bogota, Colombia: La Red, 1996), available on-line at http://www.desenredando.org..Google Scholar

17 Robles, Alessio, Coahuila y Texas & época colonial, pp. 123–36,Google Scholar is the standard treatment from the Saltillo perspective; see as well Gibson, Charles, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967 Google Scholar [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952], pp. 181–89, on late sixteenth-cen-tury Tlaxcalan colonies more generally. In addition to San Esteban, the other 1591 colonies were San Miguel Mezquitic and Asunción Tlaxcalilla, near San Luis Potosí, San Sebastián Agua del Venado, near Charcas, about 70 miles north of San Luis Potosí, San Andrés del Teul, between Zacatecas and Durango, and San Luis Colotlán, southwest of Adams, Zacatecas., “The Tlaxcalan Colonies of Spanish Coahuila and Nuevo León: An aspect of the settlement of Northern Mexico.“ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1971, p. 53.Google Scholar

18 In addition to the sources cited immediately above, see Adams, , Las colonias tlaxcaltecas, pp. 25–27.Google Scholar

19 Regarding the significance of the right to maintain an independent municipal council, Adams argues “[t]he existence of these councils enabled the pioneers of 1591 and their descendants to act in concert against encroachments upon their property and privileges, which they possessed not as individuals but as members of chartered communities under the king's special protection.” Adams, , “Borderland Communities,” p. 40 Google Scholar. For the duties of the protector de indios, see Robles, Alessio, Coahuila y Texas & época colonial, p. 294, n. 13.Google Scholar The term “exclave” comes from Gerhard, The North Frontier of New Spain, p. 221. Colonies later “spun off” from the original colonies, most frequently from San Esteban, also claimed these rights. See, for example, the fierce determination of Santa María de las Parras to sustain its rights to its municipal independence and control over resources, particularly water, against the challenges of the neighboring Aguayo, Marquesado de, in Páez, Corona, La vitivinicultura, especially chapter IV.Google Scholar

20 Sheridan, , ‘“ Indios madrineros,’” p. 44.Google Scholar San Esteban’s status of exclave was modified in the 1780s, with the introduction of the intendant system, as responsibility for “protection” shifted formally to the newly-created post of subdelegado and, informally, to the governors of Coahuila, to whom by the turn of the nineteenth century both San Esteban and Saltillo cabildos increasingly appealed their disputes. The subdelegado, local representative of the intendant, assumed the authority earlier enjoyed by the alcalde mayor. In the case of San Esteban this represented a major shift, since the alcalde mayor had historically -been barred from intervening in the affairs of the Tlaxcalan community. The subdelegado’s responsibilities included presiding over San Esteban’s council meetings and reviewing the town’s finances and land titles, which earlier had been the responsibility of the town’s protector de indios. Adams suggests the ability to act against the community’s interests was mitigated by distance from the intendancy headquarters in San Luis Potosí, and Saltillo and San Esteban officials dealt more frequently with the governors in Monclova. Adams notes as well that, in the main, late colonial provincial governors seemed inclined to respect San Esteban’s autonomy. An additional factor may have been at work discouraging San Esteban from turning to the subdelegado for relief: subdelegados were leading citizens of Saltillo, generally merchants who had prior experience as cabildo officers. San Esteban might have perceived them as interested more in the welfare of the Spanish town and its citizens than in the concerns of the Indian pueblo, and San Esteban might thus have been more readily inclined to turn to the provincial governors whose connections with the local Spanish elite were presumably less intimate, and from whom they might have hoped for a more objective hearing. Adams, , “Borderland Communities,” p. 48 Google Scholar; “Tlaxcalan Colonies,” pp. 263–67; Offutt, , Saltillo, 1770–1810, appendixes IV and V, available at http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/extras/offutt/bib.htm. Google Scholar In the case treated in the first pages of this article, we see the subdelegado rendering a decision, and San Esteban appealing it to the intendant. In a 1794 case treated later in this article San Esteban cited its appeal to the provincial governor.

21 Alessio Robles describes these as the “best lands and the greater part of the water from the copious springs of the rich and beautiful valley,” although the “copious springs” were ultimately insufficient to provide for the two communities in times of drought. Robles, Alessio, Coahuila y Texas… época colonial, p. 134.Google Scholar

22 Critical factors in the boundary disputes were the imprecision of original titles and later sale documents, the variability of natural landmarks over time, and the fact that over the course of time several acequias were constructed that led to great confusion as to which acequia was being referenced in disputes that concerned the waterway as boundary. See Robles, Alessio, Coahuila y Texas … época colonial, pp. 396–7.Google Scholar Deeds mentions the 1607 case in her “Escaseces y disensiones: la historia de agua en el noreste colonial,” unpublished ms., p. 13. José Cuello notes several of these conflicts in Saltillo Colonial, pp. 91–2.

23 AMS, PM, 1, exp. 37, 1660, reproduced in Dávila, Carlos Valdés and Bosque, Ildefonso Dávila del, eds., San Esteban de la Nueva Tlaxcala: Documentos para su Historia (Saltillo: Consejo Editorial del Estado, 1991), pp. 68–74.Google Scholar

24 AMS, PM, 3, exp. 7, 1677; 3/1, exp. 85, 1684; AMS, PM, 5, exp. 14, 1697, fl8. At least one Spanish official, the alcalde mayor of Saltillo and Santa María de las Parras, seemed rather sanguine about San Esteban’s claims when petitioned by the pueblo’s cabildo in 1677 to mark out the boundaries of the lands they claimed of the original grant to the Guachichiles. In that case Alonso de Castro, apparently a Spaniard, had built a house on lands that had been part of the Guachichil grant, which San Esteban claimed damaged its interests. The alcalde mayor offered almost no comment in complying with San Esteban’s request. AMS, PM, 3, e 3, 1677.

Regarding the “disappeared” Guachichiles and San Esteban’s rights to those lands by virtue of their intermarriage with Guachichiles, Deeds suggests that San Esteban’s argument was a “double-edged sword”; the acknowledgement of mestizaje could prejudice San Esteban’s claims to privileges granted on the basis of its residents’ Tlaxcalan ethnicity. I have not found this an issue in the several late eighteenth and early nineteenth century court cases examined for this article; indeed, a number of contemporary observes remarked on the ethnic purity of San Esteban, with Fray Juan de Morfi in particular noting Tlax-calans’ “gran cuidado de no mezclarse con la gente de castas.” See Morfi’s, comments in Viaje de Indias y diario del Nuevo México, p. 245 Google Scholar; LaFora, Fray Nicolás de, The Frontiers of New Spain: Nicolás de Lafora’s Description, 1766–1768. Lawrence Kinnaird, editor (Berkeley: Quivira Society, 1958), p. 140.Google Scholar

25 Cuello refers to a period of “prolonged agricultural crisis” in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in Saltillo Colonial, p. 60. See as well the graphic representation of drought cycles in Saltillo in Villanueva, D. et al., “Historical Droughts of North-Central Mexico,” slide p. 19 (“Precipitation Reconstruction, Saltillo, Coahuila”).Google Scholar

26 The dispute, which stretched from at least 1693 to the early months of 1700, concerned lands originally granted to Santos Rojo and Juan Navarro in the late sixteenth century, with the parameters of those grants adjudicated in 1593. The González brothers had inherited their property from their father, who had purchased it from Santos Rojo’s grandson Juan de Calis around 1655; the Rodríguezes were the greatgrandsons of Juan Navarro. See AMS, PM, 5, exp. 43, d. 2, 1696; exp. 5, 1699; exp. 14, 1696. San Esteban’s assertion that González and Rodríguez had built houses on its lands is in AMS, PM, exp. 5, exp. 14, 1696, f7. The Gonzálezes were confirmed in their possession of the contested lands in January 1697 (AMS, PM, 5, exp. 43, d. 2, 1696, f 20), but the issue remained contentious for several years, with San Esteban asserting that certain springs (ojos) claimed by the Gonzálezes lay within the three-league jurisdiction allowed San Esteban under the terms of its foundational grant. A series of witnesses affirmed that in fact Spaniards had peacefully occupied those puestos for decades with permission of the González family, and the González brothers asserted that San Esteban had a history of asserting its claims to lands and waters well beyond its legitimate borders. Notwithstanding what appeared to be a powerfully presented case on behalf of Saltillo’s.Spaniards, San Esteban sustained, at least for the moment, its rights to these puestos on the basis of a viceregal order that protected them in their possession of the disputed lands. See AMS, PM, 5, exp. 45, 1699, ff. 38–49.

27 AMS, PM, 6, exp. 41, 1704.

28 AMS, PM, 8/1, exp. 77, 1716; 9, exp. 1, 1717. The spring in question, the ojo de Manteca, had been one of three springs that had figured in the dispute referenced above among the Gonzáleses, Rodríguezes, and San Esteban in the 1690s. See as well Deeds’s discussion of these disputes in her “Escaseces y disensiones,” unpublished ms., pp. 15–16.

29 AMS, PM, 34, exp. 23, 1782.

30 AMS, PM, 35/1, exp. 51, 1783; the quoted phrase comes from f2v. One might note that the two Spanish commissioners were accompanied on their rounds by the entire compliment of San Esteban cabildo officers, the official interpreter, and various residents of the Indian community, as well as the four Spaniards who contested the findings of the 1782 survey.

31 See, for example, the argument offered by the clerical visitador general in 1716 on behalf of San Esteban, which began with an iteration of the Tlaxcalans' initial trek north in 1591 to establish defensive bases against the indios bárbaros, an endeavor benefiting both crown and clergy and undertaken at great cost of Tlaxcalan lives in return for privileges, exemptions, immunities, and land granted by the crown. The visitador noted as well that San Esteban Tlaxcalans had continued to serve the crown’s interests by founding an additional seven colonies, including three in the previous year, and had maintained horse herds (caballadas) for defense against enemy Indians. This latter point then led into the visitador’s argument that San Esteban needed additional pasturelands to sustain those herds. AMS, PM, 8/1, exp. 77, 1716, ff. 2–5.

32 Access to water had indeed been a concern of earlier claimants, both Tlaxcalan and Spanish, but the phrasing in the earlier documents emphasized much more San Esteban’s historical claims to disputed waters than questions of survival, either community or individual. While many of those earlier disputes occurred in times of drought, one does not find in those cases the kind of references to scarcity and want that one sees repeatedly in documents from the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For occurrences of drought in Saltillo, 1650-2000, see Villanueva, D. et al., “Historical Droughts in North-Central Mexico,” figure 4, p. 3, and slide, p. 19 (“Precipitation Reconstruction, Saltillo, Coahuila”).Google Scholar

33 AMS, PM, 46/1, exp. 63, 16f, 1794.

34 Cuello has summarized population trends, relying on data from a number of sources, in Saltillo colonial. According to Cuello’s summaries, Saltillo and San Esteban had a combined total of approximately 3,450 in 1677, 4,500 in 1700, and 5,560 in 1727. By 1771 Saltillo and San Esteban combined had a “minimum of 10,000 people (representing the Saltillo cabildo’s estimate in that year). More systematic surveys were conducted in the latter years of the eighteenth century, revealing population estimates of somewhere between 8,000 and 11,000 residents in the region. Cuello’s figures show San Esteban’s population holding at around 3,000 between 1791 and 1833, even as by 1813 contemporary sources indicate that Saltillo’s population had increased to nearly 22,000. He hastens to add that San Esteban’s apparent population stability in the face of increases in the population of other ethnic groups was, in fact, artificial; San Esteban continued to send its “excess” populations to other regions beyond Saltillo. See Cuello, , Saltillo colonial, cuadro 2–1, p. 57; p. 61.Google Scholar

35 José, Villanueva D. et al, “Historical Droughts in North-Central Mexico,” in particular figure 4, p. 3, and slides p. 19 (“Precipitation Reconstruction, Saltillo, Coahuila”) and p. 26 (“El Año del Hambre, 1785–1786”)Google Scholar; Pohl, Kelly et al, “A Cool Season Precipitation Reconstruction for Saltillo, Mexico.” Tree-Ring Research, 59:1 (2003), p. 17 Google Scholar; North American Drought Atlas, “Animation: Tree-Ring Reconstructed Drought,” at http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES;.LDEO/.TRL/.NADA2004/.pdsi-atlas.html.

36 Saltillo’s cabildo prohibited the export of grains from its jurisdiction in July 1785, and in September 1785 spoke about the great shortage of maize occasioned by the severe drought conditions and scarcity of water. The following year it briefly suspended a 1783 tax on grain imports, citing the “notorious scarcity of the time.” AMS, AC, L 5, a 109, fl60v; AC, L 5, a 112, fl62v; AC, L 5, a 115, fl66. In 1789 the cabildo again prohibited the export of maize without licenses, and local merchants were ordered to provide “granos y semillas de primera necesidad” to the local population. AMS, PM, 41, exp. 16, 1789; PM, 41, exp. 23, 1789; PM, 41, exp. 58, 1789. In 1794 provincial governor Miguel de Emparán forbade the sale of maize prior to the harvest (presumably to avoid speculation) and the following year prohibited the export of wheat from the province. AMS, PM, 46, exp. 45, 1794; PM, 47, exp. 21, 1795. In June 1796, Saltillo’s cabildo, citing its responsibility to “remove the burdens that bear heavily upon the poor,” ordered that neither wheat nor flour was to be taken from the district. AMS, AC, L6, a 16, f32v. Similar prohibitions were ordered by Saltillo’s cabildo every year between 1798 and 1802. AMS, PM, 50, exp. 19, 1798; 51, exp. 10, 1799; 51/1, exp. 51, 1799; 52, exp. 16, 1800; 53/1, exp. 74, 1801; AC, L6, a 67, f 114v, 1802 speaks poignantly about the “terrible drought that is being felt in all the jurisdiction” and the “time of great sadness” for the majority of the population who were poor and “on whom falls the greatest blow of the calamity” of scarcity and rising prices.

37 See the May 22 communication from Saltillo’s cabildo to provincial governor Antonio de Cordero reporting the wheat disease, and Cordero’s reference to barring the export of grains from Saltillo dated September 12, in AMS, PM, 51/1, exp. 91, 1799. See as well Hernández, Alma García, “Alternativas antes las sequías de 1789–1810,” pp. 5–10, 14–16.Google Scholar

38 AMS, AC, L 5, a 118, f 162v, 1805; AC, L6, al82–189, fl97ff, 1807. See as well subdelegado Francisco Antonio Farías’s report to the provincial governor on measures taken to avoid widespread hunger and want through the provision by several local producers of grains to be distributed among the poor and needy residents of the region. Archivo General del Estado de Coahuila, Fondo Colonial (hereafter AGEC, FC), 29, exp. 67, 1807.

39 Enrique Florescano has contributed prolifically and profitably to this avenue of inquiry, most notably in Precios del maíz y crisis agrícolas en México (1708–1810). Ensayo sobre el movimiento de los precios y sus consecuencias económicos y sociales (México: El Colegio de México, 1969). See also his Estructuras y problemas agrarios de México (1500–1821) (México: SepSetentas, 1971); “Una historia olvidada: La sequía en México,” Nexos 32 (Agosto, 1980), pp. 9–18; and the collection compiled with Pastor, Rodolfo, La crisis agrícola de 1785–1786 (Selección documental) (México: Archivo General de la Nación, en colaboración con el Departamento de Investigaciones Históricas del Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, 1981).Google Scholar Brading, D. A. and Celia Wu’s, “Population Growth and Crisis: León, 1720-1860,” Journal of Latin American Studies 5 (1973), pp. 1–36,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Brading’s, Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajío: León, 1700–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978),Google Scholar especially chapter 8, examine the demographic impact of scarcity, as does Swann, Michael M. in “The Demographic Impact of Disease and Famine in Late Colonial Northern Mexico,” in Davidson, William V. and Parsons, James J., ed., Historical Geography of Latin America: Papers in Honor of Robert C. West (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), pp. 97–109.Google Scholar Radding considers physical mobility and the blurring of ethnic identities in addition to disease in her examination of the demographic fluidity in northwestern New Spain, in Wandering Peoples, chapter 4.

40 Archivo de la Parroquia de San Esteban en Saltillo (hereafter cited as APSE), Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1807, libro de entierros; Archivo de la Parroquia del Sagrario Metropolitano en Saltillo (hereafter cited as APS), Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1785; Vol. 4, 1785–1802; Vol. 5, 1802–1808. Saltillo and San Esteban also experienced a smallpox epidemic in 1780, as noted below.

41 APSE, Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1807, entries from March 1-May 31, 1785; APS, Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773-1785, entries from March 1-June 30, 1785.

42 AMS, PM, 43, exp. 1, 1790, padrón; these figures are yielded by a hand count of the manuscript census. Census summaries that accompany the manuscript census put the population at around 11,000, roughly 3,000 of which is accounted for by San Esteban. Cuello’s estimates range from 8,000 to 11,000 in the late eighteenth century. Saltillo’s jurisdiction, based on the communities and estates included in the various late eighteenth-century censuses and an 1804 report on the state of the local economy, extended some 35 to 50 miles in every direction. Cuello, , Saltillo colonial, cuadro 2–1, p. 57; AMS, PM, 31, exp. 2, 1777, padrón; AMS, PM, 55, exp. 2, 1804.Google Scholar

43 AMS, PM, 50, exp. 8, 1798.

44 AMS, AC, L6, a31,f56v, 1798,4/16/1798.

45 APSE, Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1807, libro de entierros, April 16-June 30, 1798; April 9-June 24, 1780.

46 APS, Difunciones, Vol. 4, 1785-1802, entries from April 1-June 30, 1798. Elisabeth Butzer has examined the impact of the 1798 smallpox epidemic on the Tlaxcalan community of San Miguel de Aguayo, in neighboring Nuevo León, where over a period of 61 days in the fall of that year (September-November) 97 smallpox deaths were recorded, nearly 8% of the population of that town. Butzer, , “Carestías y epidemias. Su impacto demográfico,” in Castillo, María Isabel Monroy, ed., Constructores de la nación: la migración tlaxcalteca en el norte de Nueva España (San Luis Postosi: El Colegio de San Luis; Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala), p. 40.Google Scholar

47 APSE, Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1807, entries from June 1-September 30, 1801; APS, Difunciones, Vol. 4, 1785–1802, entries from June 1-August31, 1801. The reported deaths in the Saltillo parish for the month of September were far fewer, with tos not looming particularly large as a cause. The epidemic declined more slowly in San Esteban.

48 APSE, Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1807, entries from August 1-October 31, 1804; APS, Difunciones, Vol. 5, 1802–1808, entries from July 1-October 31, 1804.

49 APSE, Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1807, entries from March 1-July 31, 1807; APS, Difunciones, Vol. 5, 1802–1808, entries from April 1-July 31, 1807.

50 APSE, Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1807, entries for 5/19/1782, 5/20/1782, 6/4/1782; APS, Difunciones, Vol. 3, 1773–1785, entries for 5/19/1782; 5/22/1782; 6/4/1782; 7/2/1784; Vol. 4, 1785-1802, entries for 6/27/1790, 11/10/1790, 1/29/1791. See as well AMS, PM, 33, exp. 35, 1781;PM, 34, exp. 18, 1782; PM, 34, exp. 25, 1782; PM, 35/1, exp. 31, 1783; PM, 35/1, exp. 46, 1783; PM, 35/1, exp. 67, 1783; PM, 37/1, exp. 40, 1785; PM, 37/1, exp. 73, 1785; PM, 42, exp. 28, 1790; PM, 42/1, exp. 80, 1790; PM, 53/1,exp. 60, 1801; PM, 54, exp. 42, 1802; AC, L5, a 77, f 114v, 1782; AC, L5, a lll, fl61v, 1785 fot references to the Indian threat.

51 Sheridan notes attacks by Mescaleros against Saltillo in 1791 in “Reflexiones en torno a las identidades nativas en el noreste colonial,” Relaciones 92 (otoño 2002), Vol. XXIII, chart “Seguimiento del grupo mescal, 1688-1799,” p. 104; AMS, PM, 53/1, exp. 60, 1801.

52 AMS, AC, L 6, a69,f 117, 1802.

53 AMS, PM, 56, exp. 32, d 7, April 8, 1805; PM, 56, exp. 51, April 6, 1805.

54 A February 1775 letter from the alcalde mayor in Parras certified the “good services” provided by soldiers from San Esteban in defense of the frontier. Nearly four years later, in late October 1778, the local representative of the alcalde mayor certified San Esteban’s contribution of ten fully armed and equipped men for the period July 30-September 30, in the defense of the region against Indian attack (“para contener los insultos de robos, muertes y otras hostilidades con que los yndios bárbaros y rebeldes a la real corona invaden estas probincias”). In August 1780 the alcalde mayor’s representative in company with Saltillo’s cabildo certified San Esteban’s provision of 40 armed men, “leales vasallos de su magestad,” between January 30 and August 27, 1779 to defend against “yndios enemigos.” AMS, PM, 1, exp. 32, d 31, 1775; PM, 1, exp. 32, d 34, 1778; PM, 1, exp. 32, d 35, 1780. Catalogues I and II of the Fondo Presidencia Municipal of the Archivo Municipal, which cover the years 1607–1793, reveal numerous instances from years prior to the 1770s of San Esteban seeking similar certification of services.

55 “… no habra vecino que ignore las infamias, muertes, robos y daños que se encubren en dho pueblo.” AMS, PM, 35/1, exp. 46, 1783. The Saltillo resident who made this particular complaint was José Sánchez Navarro, whom the record notes as having served twice as alcalde ordinario and in other unspecified political positions in the past. In his estimation San Esteban’s sins were particularly galling, in so far as they received as much benefit as did Saltillo from the various community resources that the citizens were defending against Indian attacks, and so should have willingly and bravely borne the responsibility.